


Just Getting Started

by allthebros



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: 2009 Stanley Cup Playoffs, Canon Compliant, Hurt/Comfort, Insomnia, M/M, Roommates, slight Jonny whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-22
Updated: 2019-11-22
Packaged: 2021-02-17 21:36:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21516838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allthebros/pseuds/allthebros
Summary: Middle of the night, and Jonny’s awake. Again.
Relationships: Patrick Kane/Jonathan Toews
Comments: 10
Kudos: 151





	Just Getting Started

**Author's Note:**

> This is what I, more or less, told sorrylatenew a few days ago: "I'm kinda over writing them as young/rookies, you know? I just kinda want to write about them getting older and how they deal with that and just them more mature and all that junk... unless maybe something that touches on Jonny's illness because I feel like there's not enough of that." Which then of course meant that I had to write something that did just that. Totally played myself. Set during early 2009 playoffs when Jonny said he was really sick, couldn't sleep, almost diabetic, sleeping pills etc.
> 
> Thanks to sorrylatenew, as always, for the beta and support, you're a real bro <3333

Middle of the night, and Jonny’s awake. Again. 

Patrick knows this because he’s awake too, on his side with his back to the other bed, staring in the dark of their hotel room. Something about the tossing and turning behind him dragged him out of whatever nice dream he’s sure he was having. Or maybe it was the waves of frustration and anger rolling off Jonny hitting him in the back of the head like his misery wants company. 

Patrick closes his eyes and fists his pillow, tries to focus on his breathing, deep slow inhales he makes as quiet as possible. He needs to sleep. He _really_ fucking needs to sleep. He absolutely doesn’t want to deal with more of whatever’s going on.

Shit’s bad. Shit’s real bad and no one really knows why. Jonny pukes in the morning, he pukes before games. Sometimes, he pukes after them. 

He doesn’t sleep. 

He’s the same Jonny on the ice, the same in the locker room, but Patrick’s the dude rooming with him. He’s the one who has to listen to his gagging over the toilet and watch him come out of the bathroom looking like shit warmed over. Who has to deal with his temper tantrums because he’s sleep-deprived and grumpy.

And he’s the one awake in the middle of the night because his teammate’s got issues.

He should have requested to sleep somewhere else.

Behind him, Jonny gets up, stretches in the space between their beds. Patrick hears the popping of joints, the deep breaths Jonny takes. Then he’s moving. To the bathroom to take a leak—the sound of piss hitting the bowl, flushing, the sink running on, then off, a bottle accidentally knocked over and clattering on the counter—and then back in the room, further away from the beds.

And that’s when Jonny starts doing honest-to-god squats. 

Easy to recognize—the soft puffing, the muffled grunting, the quality of the air being displaced by the movement, its rhythm—Patrick knows the sounds, and he can’t not hear them. He pretends to sleep and listens to Jonny try to tire his body or his mind, or both. Thinks he should be doing the same, should be getting to the making part of faking it, and let Jonny deal with his bullshit. But he can’t.. He can’t do that. There’s a fucking maniac doing squats in his room at 3 fucking A.M in, Patrick is certain, his tiny-tight underwear. 

Patrick’s tired.

Patrick’s tired and he wants to get up and yell at Jonny to fucking quit it already. Just sleep! Just fucking sleep! How fucking hard can it fucking be! Everyone does it! 

It’s the _playoffs_. 

But he doesn’t. He clenches his jaw and manages to stay in bed during all of Jonny’s billion squats, and his trip to the bathroom to wipe off his sweat (Patrick assumes)—another clattering of plastic into the sink, toothbrush maybe—and him getting settled in bed once more. And then, blessed silence. Long enough Patrick starts to relax, finally. Starts to let go of the tension in his muscles, and takes a deep breath, another, feels his lungs ache with the extra air because he’d been holding his breath trying to be quiet. 

He’s on the verge of tipping over into sleep when there’s a noise of blankets being twisted and a soft, “shit,” behind him and then he’s up. He’s up with a flurry of sheets—fully fucking awake—and he’s turning on the bedside lamp, barely registeringthe look of surprise and guilt over Jonny’s face as he crosses the room, or the way he sits up urgently like Patrick’s the one who just woke him up suddenly. He switches on the light in the bathroom with a loud slap on the wall and grabs the pills from Jonny’s bag. 

He tosses the bottle at Jonny with more force than necessary. It bounces off his chest and rolls in the dip the blankets make between his knees.

“Fucking take them,” he says, biting. 

Jonny blinks—slow—moves for the bottle—too fucking slow, so Patrick’s on the move again, back to the bathroom, grabs one of the glasses from the service table on his way, rips the paper cover and lets it drop on the floor and then fills the glass from the faucet. 

“Don’t get precious about it,” is what he says when he’s back, now beside the bed with Jonny looking up at him, then at the glass Patrick’s shoved in his face. His eyes flick to the half full bottle of water on his bedside table, but he takes the glass anyway. He looks down at his hands, at the water held in one and the unopened bottle of sleeping pills in the other. 

Patrick kicks the side of the bed. “Come on.”

Jonny keeps staring down, fingers curling lightly. “I don’t—”

He’s never looked so tired. Puffy eyes and dark circles and that line between his eyes that doesn’t mean serious or focused or pissed off. Not here. Even with that flush over his face from the squatting, he’s pale and drawn. 

Patrick sighs, annoyed at the way the tight anger in his chest loosens at the sight of Jonny’s sorry, sad, pitiful face. He sits down on the edge of the bed and grabs the bottle.

“How many?” he asks

“Two,” Jonny says, quietly. 

Patrick presses on the childproof cap and twists, tips two pills into the palm of his hand and drops them into Jonny’s. Gives Jonny’s other hand a little push with the back of his fingers, water sloshing in the glass.

“I know you didn’t take them. I know you don’t like it, but—” He licks his lips, shifts on the bed, head turned towards Jonny without looking at him, just a glance and then away, shifting again in this new uncomfortable feeling like he’s somehow been handed a script for the wrong character. “But it’s the playoffs,” he continues. “So you will. And tomorrow you’ll be sick. You’ll puke in the morning and you’ll puke later and tomorrow night you’ll take the pills again. Because it’s the playoffs. You’re the captain. We fucking—we need you.”

“I feel like shit,” Jonny says, chin dipped low towards his chest, voice soft and tired with something wet in it. “All the time.”

Jonny’s not a repressed douchebag or anything. It’s not like he doesn’t have feelings. He’s actually pretty expressive when you know him and he isn’t in front of cameras being uptight about it. But it’s true that most feelings that aren’t that positive, he tends to show through hardened focus, yelling on the ice, or the bitchiest shitfits ever seen, either at others or at himself. At least in front of Patrick. Earlier this season, Jonny was definitely freaking out about the C, and there were nights where he was a jittery mess of nerves, bouncing legs and constant movement until Patrick told him to fucking settle down already because he was an annoying fuck about it. That’s something he got to see that others didn’t by virtue of being Jonny’s roommate. But then once, last season, Patrick came back to the room early and he doesn’t know if Jonny had been on the phone with his family or what, but it was obvious Jonny had been crying. Patrick didn’t ask and Jonny didn’t offer. It’s the only time he’s even come close to seeing Jonny cry like that. So there’s more there that Patrick isn’t privy to as well. 

Point is, he shouldn’t be surprised to see him like this—whatever he is right now—because they’re roommates, and Jonny’s not a fucking robot, and it’s the middle of the night. But he is. Surprised and uncomfortable and— 

Patrick’s stomach flips and he doesn’t like the feeling expanding behind his ribs.

Weak, is the first word that pops in his head, but that doesn’t feel right. Patrick’s known Jonny for two years now and there’s nothing weak about the guy except for his lame comebacks. 

“Take the pills,” he says, softer than he’d like to, and watches Jonny do it. Tipping his head back, long throat bare and soft-looking in the yellow light of the bedside table lamp. He wants to reach out and feel the bob of it as Jonny swallows. As he stays there, eyes on the ceiling, lips parted.

Patrick looks away. He takes the glass from Jonny’s hand and sets it carefully on the bedside table, goes stock still with a breath caught in his throat when he feels the soft thump of Jonny’s forehead against his shoulder.

Jonny’s breathing is slow and steady, weirdly easy to pick up by the way Patrick’s shirt sleeve brushes his skin with how close Jonny’s mouth is to it.

“Thanks,” Jonny says, so low and cracky Patrick barely hears him, and, “I’m sorry.”

Five minutes ago he was ready to punch Jonny in the face, and now he has to turn his head the other way to stop the reflexive impulse to kiss his hair, so close Patrick can smell his shampoo, the faint lingering stench of his sweat underneath. He has to sit still with the squirmy feeling inside, the uncomfortable proximity, the flips in his stomach that make him think he might be the one about to puke, until it settles, too, and he realizes that they’re breathing together, in sync. 

In, out. In, out. The heat of Jonny’s skin bleeding through his shirt.

In, out. In, out. The loud pounding of his own heart in his ears.

In, out. In, out. Until Jonny’s head gets heavier and heavier against him.

He glances Jonny’s bare shoulder with his fingertips. “Hey,” he says, twisting his head to the side to see that Jonny’s eyes are closed. “Go to sleep.”

Jonny takes a deep, deep sudden breath through his nose, startled. Lets it out, shaky and tired, as he leans against the headboard. Patrick can’t look away from the heaviness on his face, the slow blinks of his eyelids.

“You’ll be okay,” he says, feeling like he should offer something. Frowning at the kick in his lungs at seeing Jonny this way, the weird desire to reach out and press the circles under his eyes, see if he can wipe them off . “After the playoffs. You’ll figure it out. You’ll be okay.”

Jonny swallows, pinches his lips together. “Yeah,” he says, eyes closed, too shaky for Patrick, but he doesn’t know what to do about that.

You have to, Patrick thinks, looking at him. We’re just getting started.

In the morning, when Jonny comes out of the bathroom after being sick, Patrick’s there with a gatorade bottle and a mint. 

“You look like shit,” he says.

Jonny gives him the finger but grabs the bottle. The mint, he throws at Patrick’s head.


End file.
